In My Hands
by miroku-ai
Summary: After a violent encounter with Akito lands Shigure's lover in the hospital, and reveals a whole new sid to the dog of the Chinese Zodiac...in more ways than one to say the least. Is Kyou the only Sohma who holds another transrormation?
1. Default Chapter

In My Hands  
  
Chapter One-The Pouring of the Rain By Miroku ai  
  
Rated-Pg-13  
  
Disclaimer- Okay, I do not own Fruits Basket, because if I did, things would be done a little bit differently. First of all...Tohru would be gone and Shigure would be the main character. BWA HA HA! Just because I'm crazy like that, we're gonna pretend for a minute that he is....ok, now I'm done, and we can move on. Regardless, please review, because it makes me so very truly happy to find at the end of a long day, that people have read my fanfictions. Oh, and by the way, for anyone who has read my InuYasha fic, I'm really sorry about how the format turned out(I'm in the process of trying to fix that) and the second chapter is about half done. I'll post it soon.  
  
I was so happy when you smiled,  
  
Your smile breaks through the clouds of gray,  
  
Far from the sunny days that lie in sleep.  
  
Waiting with patience for the spring,  
  
When the flowers will bloom renewed again,  
  
Knowing there's more beyond the pain of today.  
  
And though the scars of yesterday remain,  
  
You can go on living as much as your heart believes.  
  
You can't be born again although you can change.  
  
Let's stay together always...  
~Fruba~  
  
"Shigure," a gentle voice whispered. "Shigure you cannot escape the grip she holds on you. I understand that you may not yet know the answer, but would you truly want to escape her? If you never would have met her, it is true that things may have been easier for the both of you, but don't you love her? Didn't you tell her as she cried with you, that this would all be over soon, and when it was, that you would not love her any less than you do know?"  
  
Shigure's dark hair hid the expression in his eyes. The tears than collected, preparing to fall. He could not bring himself to answer.  
The mechanical beeping of a life support machine kept him grounded in the horrible reality. It, like the rest of the stark white room, the stark clean hospital, was dead and cold. Just like him.  
  
A fragile and pale hand lay cradled in starchy sheets in the bed beside him. Blood still was caked under the hand's feminine fingernails. A narrow tube was inserted just below the skin on her right arm.  
  
Shigure's tear spattered the woman's skin before he stood slowly.  
  
"If you didn't love her, than why do you refuse to leave her side?" The voice asked again, not sounding quite like Hitori's normal mellow voice. Fear and stress had managed to work its way deep inside the hearts of even the strongest willed Sohma's.  
  
"Shut up Hitori, I really have no desire to listen to you try to make the situation better. It just won't work this time. Please leave." Shigure clamped his palm over his mouth to stifle his cracking voice. Tears ran down over the back of his hand.  
  
"Shigure, she's going to be okay. She's not in danger of-" Hitori began.  
  
Shigure sobbed and turned away, which sounded more like a cough and a hiccup combined. "Nothing you can say will change her! Nothing! Look at her, she's hurt because of me! My hands are stained with her blood, Hitori. When will you understand that I was the one who hurt her?!"  
  
"You know that's not true." Hitori sighed, exhausted and dizzy.  
  
"I just want her to come back to me. Why can't things be like they were? Like when our biggest worry was getting Kyou to eat leeks." Shigure swallowed another sob. "But maybe it's time to go home."  
  
"She is in good hands now, and I would know." Hitori agreed. "You need to rest."  
  
The woman's eyelids fluttered in her slumber, then settled again. Nestled among her torrents of black hair, her body glistened with sweat droplets that clung to her skin. Narrow shoulders painted in cuts and bruises shivered against the bitter sterilized air. Despite the many wounds she wore, the largest was at the base of her neck. A self-induced wound and the reason she lay barely alive in a hospital bed.  
  
"She looks like sleeping beauty. But if I kiss her she won't wake up. Not this time." Shigure stroked her hair. "Aren't I her prince anymore?"  
  
"It's time to go now.' A nurse who had just previously entered the room snapped. "Visiting hours are over."  
  
"Come on now. We'll come back in the morning." Hitori promised, and led the distressed dog out of the hospital and into his Nissan Sentra. Shigure didn't speak once during the entire ride home. Only peering off into the pouring rain beyond. Pouring...Pouring ...Pouring...Pouring...  
  
The rain...it washes away our sorrow, our pain and the heavens, it seems, are crying with us. For you and for me, and for the blood you spilled.  
I'm sorry that my tears cannot wake you this time, nor can my kiss. Is the farther you slip from me the farther you slip from this world?  
My love...I'm so sorry...that there was not more that I could have done to prevent this...  
  
Shigure's mind wandered far away, to two days before.  
"Don't go to speak with Akito." Shigure had said. "Promise me."  
  
"I want everyone to know though, Shi. I want to shout it to the world! Even him. I want to show him that love can make anything happen. Anything at all!" Rhea smiled.  
  
"You must promise me that while I am gone, you will not seek out Akito. Am I making myself clear?' Shigure frowned.  
  
"Yes Shi." She sighed. "I promise."  
  
"Good. Now, I will be home in a few hours, so be good now, okay?" He smiled and kissed her.  
  
She nodded.  
  
How could I have just kept on working while this was being done to her? Some speak of a sixth sense. Knowing when your loved one's are in trouble, knowing when they are being hurt. But it was like every other bay for me, working with my students. I felt nothing. I saw nothing happening to you.  
So why is it then, that I came home to find a note, saying that you had left to go to the main house? Why did you directly defy me? It was for your own good Rhea my love. Look what has become of you?  
Why wasn't I there to protect you?  
Why couldn't I protect you like I swore I would?  
Why...?  
  
Blood fell over Shigure's hands that night, as he picked up her lifeless body. The shrouded form of Akito stood beside him, a crimson stained dagger before him. Blood.  
  
It was everywhere.  
  
It was on his kimono...on his hands...it was he...  
  
"She wouldn't shut up," Akito grinned. "Surely you understand Shigure. Don't lie. She talks too much."  
  
"What did you do to her?" Shigure demanded, rage in his voice. He set Rhea's body down momentarily to step over the weapon and confront Akito.  
  
"I made her shut up." He spat.  
  
Rhea opened the eye that had been unmarred by Akito's initial strike. She would never see from that eye again, rest assured. She reached for the dagger on the floor.  
  
"Goodbye Shigure...goodbye. There's no point in living now. Akito is right. I will only bring you pain and suffering... And so I will mark myself. On for everyone of my sins." .She coughed and pulled the blade across each wrist, then her throat.  
  
Shigure caught her limp body as it fell. Hatred boiled within the pit of his soul. Hatred for the one who drove the only woman he had ever loved to suicide. He wanted nothing more than to hurt Akito. To kill him. To sent him to the deepest circles of Hell's inferno.  
  
That was the night. That the true Sohma curse was revealed. To prove that Kyou was not the only one who bore the pain of a monster deep within him. Shigure's inner pain and hate could rival the angered Kyou in any competition, and possibly even the keeper of Hell himself. It was the night that Shigure's true form was revealed.  
  
The pouring of the rain...  
  
Pouring incessantly...  
  
When will it stop...please...just end the pouring...  
  
End the pain... 


	2. Flooding My Senses

In My Hands  
  
Chapter Two- Flooding my Senses The Second of Three- Hurting the One I Loved  
  
By Miroku ai  
  
Rated- PG-13 for language and sexual references and stuff  
  
With eyes of fire,  
  
He sees himself as a facilitator,  
  
Rather than a meddler . It lays in ruins at his feet  
  
And he knows he will be the one to re-unite it.  
  
Claustrophobia sets in.  
  
Too many sensations...  
  
And not enough light...  
~Bekah B. ~  
  
The room smelled like wetness and memories. Memories of a dream that lingered through the day and into the proceeding night. Writhing it's way gradually into one's consciousness until it was all that one could find himself thinking of.  
That was how Shigure felt. That was how he had felt for almost four days now. The others worried. Even Kyou. They all knew that Shigure couldn't just bounce back and pretend that it had never happened. He was simply handling the pain in a slightly different way. It was true, they all had their own ways of fighting the grief. Kyou refused to budge from the roof. No amount of the horrid rain could move him. He didn't even bother to retreat for some of the food that Tohru was spilling her tears into making. Her own method of calming herself. It was thought, for a few moments, that Kyou had already filled his stomach with Yuki in his rat form. But no, Yuki was coping as well. Planting... And watering to no end... When Aiya arrived to console Shigure, he thought for sure that his baby brother was watching those very plants grow. And Aiya only made things worse. He tried so very hard to envelop Shigure in memories past of spring days painted with her smile, and how hours later, her hair and skin still smelled like the blooming flowers. More tears fell, and Aiya was shooed away from the house. Hatori stood as a silent observer, monitoring Rhea's progression, and she was in fact, improving. No such luck for the inu. His sorrow saddened Momiji, and even Hatsuharu, who had been particularly gleeful with his new girlfriend. Kisa came to cheer up Tohru and sat quietly as usual as Shigure bawled and sobbed into his tea. Ritsu appologized for his loss... repeatedly. Then appologized more when Shigure took offense at Rhea' accident being called a loss. Just when the Sohma world was beginning to collapse upon them, Hatori arrived with good news. Rhea had woken and was capable of speech. The family rushed to visit her and shower her in gifts and hugs. All, except for Shigure.  
  
I could not stand to see your face again. Dear...dear Rhea. My beloved, I wish that I had the courage to confront you, but I simply do not. All such abilities are gone from me. Washed away with the rain. Drowned in the flood. I wish I could say that the same was not true with regards to my love for you... but I fear that it may be. I could not push away that fear of causing you more pain. They will all hate me for it. But what hurts me most is that you will hate me for it...I'm sorry Rhea.  
  
*  
"What will you do", Shigure Sohma." Hatori asked gently. "You cannot avoid her forever."  
"I will try. And if that fails, than I shall leave." Shigure declare, his tears gone, but the pain greater.  
"You're a coward." the dragon spat. "The least you can do is tell her how you fear to touch her fragile skin."  
"My voice may shatter her bones." Shigure heaved.  
"No. What will break her is your absence from her when she needs you most of all." Hatori slid his tea mug around the table in the moisture it had created.  
"I am taking you to her tomorrow, so I advise that you clean yourself up a bit." Hatori stood and began to leave.  
"I pale in comparison to a being such as she." Shigure slid his finger through the wetness left on the wood. "But I will go."  
"Good Gure, I am glad for you. You have realized what you must do then?" Hatori cracked his first smile in days.  
"No, I just wanted to make you shut up." Shigure sighed and retreated to his room. The dragon left, and returned the next morning.  
Just as Shigure had promised, he was clean and presentable, although just as depressed as the day before. Hatori drug the reluctant inu to his vehicle and shut him in the passenger's seat.  
Both Sohma's remained silent during the half hour trip to the hospital.  
Returned again to the crisp sterile air that bothered one's lungs to breathe.  
Rhea sat silently in her bed, reading a novel entitled 'King Lear' by Shakespeare.  
Without looking up from her book to see who had come to visit, she recited:  
  
Then they for sudden joy did weep, And I for sudden sorrow sung, That such a king should play bo-peep And go the fools amoung.  
  
"Look who I brought to see you today, Rhea." Hatori told the frail figure.  
She answered in rhyme once again.  
  
That lord that counseled thee And give away thy land, Come place him here by me; Do thou for him stand. The sweet and bitter fool Will presently appear: The one in motley here, The other found out there.  
  
"Whose book is that?" Hatori asked.  
"Hmm? Oh yes, the book. A small dark-haired boy came to visit me last night, after hours, and gave this to me. He said to read it and then I will better understand the role of a fool in this world." Her cracked lips pursed in a gentle smile. "It's a really interesting book, it is, although I don't yet understand what that little boy meant. Such beautiful blue eyes he had ."  
"Did you know this boy?" the dragon asked as he took a seat.  
"No, I don't. That's what perplexes me though. I feel as if I do. When he first entered, all was dark, and I felt an odd fear in the pit of my stomach. Then there was this strange light, and he sat down next to me, and gave me the book. I thought there had been awkward music as well, but when I listened for it, it went away. I had thought the next morning, that I had hallucinated all of it, but I rolled over, and there was the book on my nightstand. "She scratched her head, then turned to Shigure. "It sure is nice to see you here, Shi. Aiya told me that you were very busy, and couldn't come right away. Thank you for finding time right now."  
Shigure nodded, and sat beside her.  
"Are you feeling better?" He asked in a wispy voice.  
"Why yes, very much so. The doctors say that I can go home in less than a week, and that there isn't anything wrong with me that won't go away. Isn't that great?" She grinned.  
"Wonderful..." Shigure whispered and turned away. 


End file.
